Project Name: Palazzo Daniele

Location – Italy

Date Completed – 2018

Interior Designer – Palomba Serafini Associati

When you strip down to the basics, what do you have left? The 150-year-old Palazzo Daniele expunged in its heavy past, including furniture, and returned to its core essentials. In the nine suites, bare walls feature the cracks of time and monastic beds take centre stage, serving to exaggerate the grandeur of the original ceiling frescoes and mosaic flooring. Located in Gagliano del Capo, Italy, this boutique hotel is a beautiful and elegant restoration, that pays homage to its former self, whilst the design details help to bring the space to life.

This is a restoration project that is aimed at highlighting the issue of detachment. The concept aimed to bring these spaces back to the idea of places that are no longer inhabited but freed from their nature and their function. This was then incorporated with the aesthetics linked to the type of furniture for daily living. This creates openings towards the outdoors which generate hybrids that confuse the inside out, in a continuity between painted spaces and bare walls, creating something absolutely unusual.

Palomba Serafini Associati felt that it was amazing to mix design pieces with the old attitude of the palazzo; where the bathrooms become an installation, like the archaic source of water coming down from the 6 meter high ceiling is collected in a very large basin, made with pietra serena by Andrea Sala. Furthermore, like the monastic cells with a fitting lighting by Simon D’Exéa. A large design focus was on the walls, finding a way to give to the walls historical flavour in a contemporary way, using special painting.

Inspired by the idea of absence, the award-winning Milanese duo Ludovica + Roberto Palomba stripped back the interiors while restoring the ornate frescoes and mosaic flooring, creating an exceptional backdrop for the owner’s ever-expanding contemporary art collection. The Palazzo Daniele is in turn, a delicately intricate and fascinatingly interesting boutique hotel where guests can both relax and immerse themselves in the historical detailing.